Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday November 03, 2009 @12:54PM
from the vestigial-tail dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "It wasn't all that long ago that Microsoft was talking up the Virtual WiFi feature developed by Microsoft Research and set for inclusion in Windows 7, but something got lost along the road to release day, and the functionality never officially made it into the OS. As you might expect with anything as big and complicated as an operating system though, some of that code did make it into the final release, and there was apparently enough of it for the folks at Nomadio to exploit into a full fledged feature. That's now become Connectify, a free application from the company that effectively turns any Windows 7 computer into a virtual WiFi hotspot — letting you, for instance, wirelessly tether a number of devices to your laptop at location where only an Ethernet jack is available, or even tether a number of laptops together at a coffee shop that charges for WiFi."

Yeah, all this work developing a useful feature since 2006 waiting for driver support that wasn't coming, might as well just get that out of the OS to stop everyone from using it and enjoying the feature.

Or, more likely, the first service pack will contain the necessary updates to enable this natively without needing the third party software.

Expect the next release of the EULA to say something like any future and unknown at the moment uses of the operating system or its APIs that MS doesn't approve of at some future date, become automatic EULA violations even if those uses are unknown at the time the end user first agreed to the EULA.

The problem with bloat isn't disk space, its code complexity. The more bloat, the more complex the code is, the more security problems, the more bugs, the more difficult it is to implement a good, useful feature. Of course, one man's bloat is another man's killer feature, so its sort of relative. But still, windows has too many ways of doing things in their api's. Then again, even Linus has called his own kernel bloated. Maybe that's the price we pay for the functionality we crave these days.

Bandwidth isn't the only limited resource. Physical space is a limited resource.

That "overpriced" coffee includes the rent for the space (resources) you take up. If the place is charging for WiFi then it is because too many people were ordering a single small coffee of the day and then plunking themselves down for the day with their laptop and not ordering anything else.

If you like the coffee house enough to go there and make use of its services you should also be willing to pay for them. Really good coffee

"Um, if the coffee house let you use wifi all day after purchasing a single item, what is wrong with taking advantage of that? The coffee house goes under? So what, it was a bad business plan then and should be left to die."

This is why we can't have nice things.

"Ya right, like corportations aren't trying to screw you out of every cent possible either. Turn about is fair play you know."

Not every business is a soulless corporation... Though behavior like that will be sure to leave the big corps as the only ones left standing.

"You act as if local businesses aren't there trying to make money as well. They are, and believe me they fight for advantages whenever they can. The sooner people wake up to that fact, the better off we'll all be."...Of course local businesses are trying to make money. That's part of the business of being a business.

Local businesses don't tend to have the clout and resources that national chains do so they generally have to be more receptive to their customer. McD's doesn't care if something pisses of a ha

Is Engadget going to instruct us on how to distract the employees while you pour free coffee into your thermos too?

Hrm... Bad analogy.

The Cofeeshop already sold you the coffee (bandwidth) by the temporary key and you are simply pouring it in someone else's cup free of charge by running windows 7.

Another bad analogy. Okay, my turn to play the silly moral analogy game...

This is more akin to visiting a place that gives free refills, and you constantly pouring it in someone else's cup, then doing the same for all your friends, in the process using far more coffee than you would reasonably have drunk yourself. You know damn well that wasn't the deal that was being offered. (*)

You're ultimately gaming the system- regardless of what "agreement" you think you have with them, it's probably against the spirit of the deal. Doing this type of thing with (e.g.) small businesses that aren't too assholish is ultimately what forces them to include irritating small-print restrictions on such services which I'm willing to bet people would be the first to whine about.

(*) Please *don't* say "that was the agreement I get an hour's free Internet with my $1.50 coffee, it's mine, I can do what I like with it, their bad business model isn't my problem". There probably wasn't an "agreement" in that much detail- lots of thing in a given society function on implicit understanding of how they work (e.g. you don't get arrested for trespassing if you enter some random shop because any reasonable person would say that's how shops work). Or they may well have some small print in some terms and conditions that you (understandably) didn't want to read before you took up their offer. Or whatever... even if it was "legal", see the final paragraph above.

Another bad analogy. Okay, my turn to play the silly moral analogy game...

This is more akin to visiting a place that gives free refills, and you constantly pouring it in someone else's cup, then doing the same for all your friends, in the process using far more coffee than you would reasonably have drunk yourself. You know damn well that wasn't the deal that was being offered.

Arguably, using the technique to garner free refills for your friends or say ordering a water and then using free soda is not technic

And by social contract... I mean implied. Unless the store specifically puts up a sign that says "No refills for friends!" or "No sharing your wifi access to friends while in the store!" then there is no outright understanding between the two parties on what is the acceptable behavior while you are in the store other than social norms.

Its still ethically dubious but because there is not moral or legal code dictating this behavior then the stores only recourse is to post their rules or make them known verbal

Arguably, using the technique to garner free refills for your friends or say ordering a water and then using free soda is not technically morally wrong.

I'm not sure what you mean by "technically morally" wrong; and as the other guy said, you probably *did* pay specifically for the water rather than soda, so it's ethically wrong, and arguably morally wrong too if it's a small enough business to affect those who work there.

And FWIW, in that case it's probably "legally" wrong since you were taking something you didn't pay for. In reality, of course, it's not going to be worth their time pursuing that one- they'll say "GTFO and don't come back" and it'll end

The resulting Connectify differs from the Internet connection sharing that Windows already supports via an "ad hoc" network connection, which lets several Windows computers share a single connection. "For one thing, it shows up as a real wireless access point," Gizis said. "Two, Internet connection sharing has issues. It returns to the default settings every time you shut down a connection. And three, you can join another wireless network and still run the Connectify Hotspot on the same Wi-Fi card."

Any business who relies on making money this way will be short-lived. With the proliferation of mobile internet devices and the coming rollout of new technologies such as WiMax, WiFi won't be the valuable commodity it is today.

I read the article and it does not make clear if it will work with any card.

I ask this because I was looking to do this some time ago (I want to connect my DS and Wii to internet using my existing PC as an access point) and, although there was some software (now discontinued) that allowed you to do that on WIndows, and on Linux you had to spend your time with ifconfig and whatnot (it was never clear for me, but the first step was to change your wifi card to AP mode).

Seems ironic.. and on Linux you had to spend your time with ifconfig and whatnot (it was never clear for me, but the first step was to change your wifi card to AP mode). and then your sig says Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'... I'm guessing you're a Ubuntu user?

This has been standard and expected functionality in Linux for years; practically as long as wi-fi cards have been supported. Why the hell is this news? Microsoft didn't even complete the support, it's a third party hack... This is worse than the claim that Aero Glass was revolutionary.

Yes, you can do virtual access points with the Mad WiFi drivers, but I'm not aware of any other drivers that support that. I use this to have my Linux home server provide both a public open network and a private encrypted network with a single physical wireless card.

But it's certainly not standard functionality, or I could have used any supported WiFi card and not be tied to a specific driver.

Yes, note that you used the singular. It can become an access point. Not multiple access points. Try running a single physical device in multiple modes at the same time or as multiple access points at the same time. You can do that with Mad WiFi, but not with anything else that I'm aware of with Linux.

From what I understand, they virtualize the WiFi card into two devices, the access point (so other computers can connect to your "access point") and the client (so you can get the internet access from a wireless access point).

The only potential problem is that I'm not at all sure that all wireless adaptors have full support for the features needed. I believe these VWLANs require that the chips support Monitor mode, which gives software access to all wireless trafic. Similar to promiscous mode, except that it is literally all wireless traffic on the current channel, not just traffic for the given SSID. It also requires support for packet injection wheile in monitor mode, which lets arbitrary packets be crafted in software and sen

... that an OS was just released with incomplete, unimplemented, undocumented, untested code? Has that ever happened in the history of computing before? This sounds incredible! Maybe MS can get a patent on it!

Intel has a very similar tech called MyWifi in their newer cards, it uses Windows ICS so it differs in implementation, but does offer a full AP mode while being connected to an external wifi network.http://ces.cnet.com/8301-19167_1-10139172-100.html [cnet.com]

This is not an exploit as in a vulnerability, this is exploiting a feature in the sense of taking advantage of and using it. The story is just that Microsoft released the OS without doing this themselves. It's entirely possible that Microsoft intended to release something down the road that enabled all of this, so it may make sense to ship the OS with most of the base code so that it doesn't need to be downloaded again later.

According to TFA the lower-level implementation code was there, but the driver-level code had not been finished because of an apparent lack of driver support. The company who finished this feature says that they realized that they already had all of the needed code in their other networking products.

It appears the UI isn't in Windows 7, but the feature is definitely there. If you have Windows 7 with a recent WiFi driver (virtual WLAN support is required for Win7 logo program), just type "netsh wlan start hostednetwork" and it'll create the virtual WLAN. Type "netsh wlan set hostednetwork" to see the options for SSID, passphrase, etc. The documentation for this is on MSDN [microsoft.com].

Your Mac will show up as an actual access point instead of an ad-hoc wireless network with ICS enabled? No, it won't. This is different then what Windows, OS X, and desktop Linux distros have been doing before.

On OS X itself (that is set up this way) the Airport icon changes into a base station icon with an arrow to show you the card is running in AP mode instead of ad-hoc wireless network (which is a different icon again) or normal wireless client mode.

The resulting Connectify differs from ICS that Windows already supports via an "ad hoc" network connection, which lets several Windows computers share a single connection.1) It shows up as a real wireless access point.2) ICS returns to default settings every time you shut down a connection. 3) You can join another wireless network and still run the Connectify Hotspot on the same Wi-Fi card.

It's better than ICS, the host laptop shows up as an access point that the other laptops can connect to (in my experience, connecting to an access point is quite a lot easier than setting up an ad hoc network).

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I can connect to a hotspot with my MacBook and share the connection to another MacBook across the room. I don't get disconnected from the hotspot in doing so.

You mean you can do this without using the ethernet port? I can only use either the ethernet or airport connection for just one connection. So airport is either hotspot (server) for receiving connections from other devices, or it connects as client.

When I setup my macbook as hotspot, the internet connection gets lost. So the network is only local, unless I use the ethernet port to connect via cable.

This isn't even remotely ad-hoc networking. This is turning a regular computer into an access point. You can also connect to one wireless network, then set yourself up as an access point to that network, which normally would require two separate network cards.

Mods, please RTFS. People saying "Ad-hoc has been around for years" and similar keep getting all the mod points, even though they're completely missing the point. Apple has something like this since Leopard, not anytime before like everyone here keeps mentioning.

And frankly.. I can't figure out how it's different. Further, I can't figure out how it's special either. I'm pretty sure that my old d-link wireless b pcmcia card came with an internet sharing feature in the driver disk in 2001.

Heck, I remember doing it before I'd heard of wireless with an ethernet null modem local network to share a 56k modem connection back in the 90s, and in fact, I was under the impression that this was a feature that was al

No. OSX does not allow you to use a single wireless card for both 1) connecting to a wireless network, and 2) broadcasting itself as a hotspot.

Windows has had Internet Sharing since the 90's (oh dear, did Apple not invent that feature?!). The new feature here is virtualizing the wireless card so it behaves as though it's two wireless cards. Try that on any version of OSX and let me know how it goes.

Is that similar to the Internet Connection Sharing that Windows has had since (at least) Windows 95?

Yes and no, Windows ICS is only DHCP/NAT software. OSX Internet Sharing also allows you to configure your Wifi card into access point mode. Connectify is promising to allow you to run Windows wifi cards in access-point mode WHILE using it in regular structured mode... which seems like a dubious claim. The makers of Connectify haven't yet listed which cards they are going to support.

They are also planning on selling the software when it leaves beta. Which may very well wind up being a very short life-span indeed, considering the only reason it wasn't enabled in Win7 was driver support. One could reasonably expect driver-support for the native code will be forthcoming by Win7 SP1.

It's odd you should say this, because I've had a Windows guru/sysadmin try several times to get this working (with his Dell running XP), and every time he's given up after about 45 minutes of messing with configuration settings. I myself tried it on both of my work-issued PCs (an HP and a Lenovo, both running XP) and found it completely impossible. Of the many Windows users I know, none have ever successfully used their laptop as an AP or a reverse bridge (providing connectivity over ethernet from a single

If you did actually bother to read the actual article you would find the correct answer to your question is no. This isn't ICS with WiFi in ad-hoc mode, this turns windows into an infrastructure access point.